Willie Randolph workout day interview

Randolph talks about dealing with team injuries and pitching to Pujols

By / MLB.com

Can you just update us on Cliff's
status and when and if you've made a decision.

WILLIE RANDOLPH: He had a nice little
workout, swung the bat well in BP, and we're going
to just wait until tomorrow to decide when he
comes in. We have until tomorrow morning at ten
o'clock to make our decision, so we'll wait until
tomorrow morning and see if he's on the roster.

What else can change in that time?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: See how he feels,
how he feels physically. He had a nice little
workout. I'm optimistic it will work out fine. We
have time to wait, see how he feels when he gets
up tomorrow morning. We don't anticipate any
setbacks or anything like that, but might as well
take the opportunity to wait and see before we
make a decision on that.

The condition he's in now, can you
put him on the roster, if he feels tomorrow
morning like this now?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: I haven't talked to
him. He came off the field and I had meetings with
Omar and I haven't talked to him.

How much more comfortable does
Carlos Beltrán look compared to last year and
how much do you attribute that to Carlos
Delgado?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: I've been asked this
question many times. Carlos was going to have a
big year because he's very, very talented and I'm
sure having a guy like Delgado around, like any
good teammate, helps the comfort level.

Last year was obviously a transition period
for him. He's too talented, and a lot more healthy,
to not have a good year this year. So I think this is
really all about Carlos just being a lot more settled
in his environment, a lot more comfortable with the
team and just being healthy. He's too talented to
have had the off year he had last year or the year
that I'm sure he didn't expect he was going to
have. So really this is just having good people
around him, like Carlos and Jose Reyes and guys
like that do well in front of him. It's all part of a
trickle-down effect; when you have good people
and improve your ballclub, it takes a little pressure
off you and he can go out and perform like he's
supposed to.

With as successful as the bullpen
was, is there a concern about it being
overworked in the next round?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: No. Two or three
days off is a lot of time to rest up. We're ready to
go.

I know every circumstance is
different, but I'd like to ask you about a
scenario that showed up here earlier in the
season when St. Louis was in town. If there's
two on, and an open base, and Albert Pujols
comes up, will you now be more inclined to
pitch to him or walk him?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: You don't want the
big boy to hurt you or anything like that, so that's a
good possibility, we'll wait until we get to that point.
It's safe to say he's one of the guys you don't want
to hurt you. I won't etch it in stone, but yeah, if you
have a situation where he can hurt you and it's a
big situation, yeah, it's smart to probably walk him,
yeah.

Cliff was saying before that it's not a
one-game series, it's seven, and he has to be
available for all seven games in his own mind.
How much would you expect from a player like
him to say, it hurts, it doesn't hurt, I can gut it
out, I'm fine.

WILLIE RANDOLPH: How much do I
expect from him?

In terms of talking about pain and
admitting there is pain or just saying, hey, I'm
fine, I can do it, the old college try, you know,
whatever you want to say?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: It's an individual
thing. Some guys can tolerate pain a little more or
less than others, so I just take it for face value for
what he says to me. I would hope that if he's not
100%, be as close as he can so he can help us
win. You have 24 other guys to consider and think
about.

I trust when he tells me how he feels, and
then we have to make a determination on whether
he fits into our roster right now as far as the big
picture.

It's an individual thing. You just, you know,
go by individuals and how they feel and what they
say to you and you just go from there.

You were talking about the comfort,
Beltrán's comfort level. Some guys struggle
when they come to New York and other guys
struggle in the playoffs but Delgado has not
struggled with either. What is it about his
makeup that makes him so easily able to
adjust?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: Well, you know, he
could just be lucky I guess. It could be something
as simple as that. (Laughter.)

He's a solid guy. I've known him a long
time. He's always been pretty much the same. I
don't think that even guys that might seem to be
comfortable and guys I might say, can handle it,
will have off-years in New York. Dave Winfield is
an example of that. He had a decent year for the
Yankees that year but he struggled in the World
Series.

You have to deal with that again on an
individual basis. There's no blueprint or anything
like that to who can succeed or fail in this town. It's
really how good you feel and your confidence and
your ability. Like I said, in some cases, being
healthy and being a little bit lucky at times, also.
Carlos got off to a nice start this year. As
a matter of fact, I think he can be better. So who is
to say that he's had the year that he shouldn't be
having anyway. When you hit what, .270
something which is okay, he might hit .300 next
year. He's a guy that can make some adjustments
for us, and that's a big part of winning and being
where we are right now.

Tony La Russa was saying that he
remembers being very impressed by you in
your first Spring Training with this team. In
terms of the chemistry that everybody has
talked about with this team this year, what
specifically can you remember doing to foster
that, any talks you had with guys, any times
when there was tension and you broke it up,
was there anything specific you can
remember?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: Since I've been
here?

Since you've been here, and
especially this year.

WILLIE RANDOLPH: No, I just -- what I
do, again, I'm not a psychology major of course,
but I just try to communicate with my players
one-on-one. I'm not going to divulge any meetings
or what I said to guys. My main motivation is
again, a way of just trying to get the most out of my
players.

We've had meetings, we've had talks. A
lot of what I do is one-on-one and very individual.
We started a trend last year and started to change
the culture of this ballclub, and the idea of how we
play the game and the mindset, and it's kind of
evolved to where we are right now. We made
some changes and we brought in some people
that really helped to enhance what we're trying to
do, but my leadership is something that I can't
describe to you. I mean, it's just something that I
do. I've always done it, something I've always had.
So, you know, it would be tough for me to chronicle
how we got started or what we did.

This year was actually a little bit difficult
because of the WBC, but we were able to in some
cases touch and go one-on-one with guys that
were there individually which in some cases helped
us a little bit because I had a chance to not have
as many guys around and was able to tap into
guys individually, so that helped also.

Again, what you see is what you get with
me and, I don't know, just being myself. It's really
just how you communicate and how you motivate
and how you lead your people, and I can't explain
how I do that, I just do it.

You've obviously had tremendous
success in post-season as a player and as a
coach, talk about what it's like the experience
of managing here as you try to get to the next
step?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: It's been a blast. I'm
having an unbelievable time with this and to see
my team come together as quick as they have, it's
just been a real blessing for me and a total gas.
You know, we have fun in the clubhouse
and on the field, but when it's time to play, we're
very focused and intense. This is like, you know,
something that I've waited for for a long time
personally and to see these guys come together
the way they have has just been very rewarding for
me. I've said earlier, we have a long way to go
and looking forward to the challenges in front of us.

The Cliff situation notwithstanding,
are you considering any other roster moves for
tomorrow?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: No, not really. We
might go back to 11 pitchers possibly, depending
again on how Cliff feels. If he's not quite where we
want him to be, we might add someone like
Anderson Hernández or DiFelice, getting an extra
body as far as an everyday player. I don't think
we'll go with 12 pitchers but we'll wait and see on
that. There might be one or two minor things but
nothing earth-shattering.

With Cliff's situation does that mean
you haven't set your starting lineup yet?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: No, I haven't given
the guys the lineup today. Wait and see how Cliff
feels.

How about the rotation, do you
already have in mind exactly who is going to
pitch the first four games?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: Yeah, we're going to
go with Glavine starting out and we're going to
follow him with John Maine and Trachsel going in
St. Louis and probably Oliver Perez right behind.

How much the nature of the
playoffs, how much does that magnify the
importance of the bullpen and can you talk
about Bradford possibly being the kind of guy
that would come in having to face Pujols
somewhere in the series?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: The bullpen is huge
I think in the playoffs and winning a short series,
the bullpen comes in real big. We relied on our
bullpen the last years and I'm not saying that's
going to be exactly how we're going to go after
things this next series; it could be. They are going
to be ready to go.

Bradford has been great for us all year.
Obviously if we can come up with a situation where
we feel like he can go after Pujols, we'll set that
up. But according to the gentlemen here, we're not
going to pitch to him. (Laughter.) So we might not
need Bradford.

My bullpen has been outstanding all year
and everyone's well rested and ready to go.

I have to ask you just because it's
dominated conversation so much in this town
the last few days, your thoughts about Joe
coming back over at the Yankees?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: I think it's great.
Joe, I mean, he's done an outstanding job for the
Yankees, and I didn't understand all the talk
anyway. He deserves to be back. He's done
tremendous things for the organization. That's
outstanding. It shouldn't have been, in my mind, a
thought anyway. That's just me personally.

Is there one or two things that you
can pinpoint, the lessons that you learned most
about managing in the post-season that you
may have seen from watching him?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: No. When you're in
the mix yourself there, you can't really rely on what
you might have learned. It's there, you know, the
experiences over the years is there. But I don't
really look back on, you know, in a spot where I
might think, well, how so and so did that or how
would so and so do that. I go by how I feel.

What you have learned from
watching your team over the course of the
season?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: Yes, I have an idea
of what my people can do and try to put them in
the right positions to see and reacting to what I see
and what I feel at that moment.

I've been fortunate to be around a lot of
great managers and coaches and players and I
think that I've taken a little bit from everyone, and
that's who I am. But I don't have to revert back to
how does so and so do this or a situation where
how would this guy handle that. Just wing it, that's
all. (Smiling).

Just to go back to the question
about chemistry, I just want to know how much
that matters. I know you've been on winning
teams where not everybody was a good friend
of everybody, but how much does it matter that
guys get along?

WILLIE RANDOLPH: Oh, it definitely
helps. I mean, we're a family. We're brothers.
We're with each other every day just as much as
we are with our families. You've heard that before.
It doesn't always mean that you have to
have that. I mean, obviously some people might
believe that winning builds chemistry and all that.
It depends on the characters you have on your
team and the makeup of your ballclub, how guys
feel about committing to winning and buying into
what you want to do. It's a collective -- again, it's
an ownership that everyone has to be a part of.
There always might be guys who might be selfish,
but if you can get 25 guys who are unselfish and
want the opportunity to experience something very,
very special, that's really where the chemistry
comes in because you have 25 guys who have
bought into your idea, your philosophy, your
approach to playing the game, and they don't really
care who gets any of the, you know, the attention
or the accolades.

We have a nice mix of those kind of
people, and that's why I think we've been so
successful so quick.

Courtesy of FastScripts by ASAP Sports. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.